StrangeSox

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 06:59 PM) This why these discussions become meaningless. You don't have to make large sweeping generalizations to distract from meaningful discussion. No one implied there was any laziness or lack of effort in anything just a different opinion on what should be restricted and how to accomplish it. I'm operating under the assumption, and bmags may be too, that duke is at least somewhat trolling here. This "the federal government would have crushed democracy by now but for our guns"rhetoric is markedly different from how duke has posted here in the past. I could be wrong and his views have changed or I've miss-remembered, though.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:37 PM) At this point, it's just about better then any alternative any of these dumbs***s can come up with. It'll be another recession, so that'll suck. QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:38 PM) It may be better than having to make deals with the creditors of our (their) country. Our interest rates are incredibly low and actually negative in npv for 10 year bonds. Bond holders are effectively paying the Treasury to lend them money.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:23 PM) Yea. Just like health care. Jam everything up our ass!! YEA! Move to Europe if you don't like this country. "Republican policy" isn't "this country," stop being a dope

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 04:53 PM) We CAN do SHOULD implement meaningful regulation/restrictions here, but our situation is very unique and cannot be compared to any other countries rules/regulations, as we have to do it in a way that remains constitutional. I believe it can be done...and I think if there was ever an opportunity to make it happen, it's now. In other news, some kid in South Dakota just shot his friend with a shotgun and killed him after an argument over a paintball game. Fwiw there was no constitutional individual right clearly on the books until four years ago. Another case could overturn that 5-4 decision

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 04:53 PM) We CAN do SHOULD implement meaningful regulation/restrictions here, but our situation is very unique and cannot be compared to any other countries rules/regulations, as we have to do it in a way that remains constitutional. I believe it can be done...and I think if there was ever an opportunity to make it happen, it's now. In other news, some kid in South Dakota just shot his friend with a shotgun and killed him after an argument over a paintball game. I'm sure his parents were law abiding citizens and not criminals/"bad guys"

we should total ban u

We'll get the 'sacrifice' from millionaires of some change they found in the couch cushions in their 3rd home though! btw here's what other people will be sacrificing if they make some sort of chained CPI deal: But, hey, shared sacrifice!

^^

Robert Bork died the other day. I think Toobin's take is accurate and fair:

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 10:57 AM) I'm not really worked up, just pointing out that when we re-post links to absurd stories on places like Facebook, or other popular social mediums, we often have the opposite effect of what we intended to have. While we want to point out how absurd something is, and hope people ignore that person from that point forward, all we really did was help sensationalize them and their opinions, generate revenue for that person, and help spread their name. I often believe that when people write things so absurd, that's exactly what they wanted. On the other hand, Tina Brown was turning Newsweek into trolling link-bait. Even though people still linked to and mocked the articles, the magazine essentially died. edit: I'm also going to push back against the idea that they're trolling. I think Allen and McArdle were trying to offer honest suggestions of what they believe to be good policy. Since their suggestions and analysis were so horrible, they should be dissected for everyone to see just how absurd they are. Dumb ideas presented in major publications need to be addressed, not ignored, lest they fester and spread.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 10:11 AM) Do we have any proof of this here in the US? When the Brady Bill was passed and there was a waiting period enacted, did that curb the sale of guns? What will registration do? If you find out a guy is buying 15 guns over a two year period, are you going to send FBI agents to see what he's up to? What's the end game there? I could see it maybe helping if a specific dealership has sold a crazy amount of guns that happen to end up with criminals, but i'm not sure what the next step there is - arrest the dealership for selling a gun legally to a person legally able to buy the gun? I just don't see an effective restriction here that's going to stop people that want guns to get them. Guns aren't a product purchased by people who are iffy on whether they want one. If you want one, you want it for a reason (hunting, sport, protection). We put up restrictions on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes, but if you want them, you're still going to get them. Yes. The weapons restricted by the 1936 NFA and the 1984 FOPA. It capped the number of these weapons that could ever legally enter into circulation. Thanks to both the red tape and high costs due to restricted supply, few people own fully automatic weapons (or suppressors etc.) and they are only infrequently used in crimes. The AWB of the 90's was similar, but with the sunset provision, there was not enough time for that cap to start taking effect. Pre-ban weapons and accessories were still widely and relatively cheaply available, though I believe they fetched a price premium.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:57 AM) You're talking about banning handguns and assault weapons right? If not, others like SS are. And if we're back to simply "making it more difficult" then as I said on page 2 of this thing that solves nothing. Making it more difficult just means making the process longer. If you want a gun, you'll still get it. First, I think I've waffled between a straight-up ban, which would surely be found unconstitutional by the current court, and much stronger restrictions. Making it more difficult means less people will get guns. I see no reason to believe that NFA-style controls on handguns can't be effective.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:55 AM) And absent some blanket ban on a type of gun, like handguns, that's not going to happen. And I think that kind of ban would be unconstitutional. It's not narrowly tailored being that it's an outright ban on a product nor is the least restrictive means of solving a problem that isn't caused SOLELY from the availability of guns. A national registry to cut down on straw purchases and overall restricted access to handguns could certainly help to reduce the flow of weapons to the streets.

Also a national registry for all firearms.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57560112...ung-under-fire/ the patent is actually much broader than just "pinch to zoom"

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:44 AM) Conventional wisdom I suppose, but I think it's a reasonable assumption that these people are looking for attention and what better way than a mass tragedy. Why would this 20 year old have done what he did if not for attention? He was pissed at his mom, so he killed her. Why go to the school too? Not being a psychologist or sociologist or having read much (if anything) on the topic, I don't feel I can give any sort of an informed answer. But it seems like the lazy media-explanation to me and doesn't seem quite right or universally applicable.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:42 AM) But cut that number in half, at least, for the people who deliberately kill other people because they're gang members and criminals. And also ignore the amount of people that die from other random acts of violence, from DUI's, from cigarettes, from whatever else we as society accept because it's an acceptable loss to allow us to do X. I'm sorry, I care about reducing gang violence as well.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:35 AM) I don't see how violent movies or tv shows play into this. If anything, the people that perform these acts are seeking attention, so it's the non-stop coverage of these tragedies that they're going for. We learn what's right or wrong at an early age, violence is no different than cheating or lying. Do we blame movies for Wall Street being a bunch of greedy whores? When certain coaches and administrators at school cheat at sports, do we blame "win at all costs" sports movies? Nope. do we know this for sure or is this mainly 'conventional wisdom'?

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:21 AM) Those video games are much more popular in the East Asian countries, so I'm not so sure you can make a strong correlation there. It was the #1 selling game of all-time in the UK according to wiki.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:07 AM) See, this is the disconnect for me in this discussion. There are people who have guns, who have grown up with guns and don't live on top of someone else because they have land and space. They DO use guns on the weekends for kicks. I grew up with land and I would routinely go out and shoot at cans or clay pigeons or whatever. I wasn't killing anything. I wasn't shooting someone because I needed to wait for a pizza, I shot at a plastic or tin object because it was FUN to do. Surprisingly i'm not some deranged individual that might shoot someone at any moment! Shocking! Unfortunately, you can't routinely and accurately predict if/when someone might 'snap' or act irrationally with a weapon. It's not deranged people that are shooting their children accidentally at home when they're sneaking in late. I don't think Zimmerman or Dunn were deranged or clinically mentally disturbed. Look, personally, I like the mechanical aspects of guns from the engineering perspective. I'm sure I would enjoy target shooting. I don't think I'd enjoy hunting myself, but I don't have a moral problem with it. Yet, at the same time, I recognize that the wide-spread presence of guns in our society is causing real pain and suffering. I don't want to take away someone's perfectly benign hobby but, at the same time, you can't know when the tool of that hobby will become a tool of violence--nobody is purely evil and many people are law-abiding, responsible gun owners right up until they aren't. It's not that I think you, personally, or ptact etc. will be going around shooting people up or even that your personal guns that will fall into the wrong hands. It's that the ease with which you can legally get a gun, even in Illinois, means that it's much easier for anyone to get a gun. Then we get into a circle of violence that eats itself, where the prevalence of guns and gun crimes is used to justify more people with more guns in more places. Then we get stories where people who are otherwise perfectly normal, sane human beings make stupid snap decisions (Dunn, Zimmerman, pizza guy) and someone else ends up dead or injured. Or we get easy, untraced straw purchases funneling guns into communities trying their best to keep these weapons that have caused so much devastation and grief out. Or we get kids accidentally killing themselves or others when they get a hold of a gun. Or, most tragically, we have someone's own weapons taken, used against them and then used to slaughter 26 more people. If we had some way of knowing beforehand who's deranged, who might accidentally or carelessly or naively allow access to someone who is deranged, who may funnel these guns to criminals, or who may make a very bad decision in a heated moment, it would be a different situation. But we don't, and we can't. The person making that bad decision could easily be you or I, and it could result in some innocent person being dead and you spending the rest of your life in jail or worse. When I look at it that way, and I look at how just about every other country in the world handles gun control and I look at our own successes in this country, I have to believe that there's a valid public policy response that can reduce gun violence in this country. To say that there's simply nothing we can do, that we just have to live with these awful incidents again and again and again, on a daily basis in many communities, is a defeatist attitude that I simply cannot and will not accept.

argument over Sandy Hook shooting ends in gunfire http://gawker.com/5969933/argument-over-sa...ends-in-gunfire If only the customer had been armed, too! edit: This is why saying "we need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals/bad guys" is meaningless. I'm sure Davis was a Law Abiding Citizen prior to this, as was the guy who shot someone at Little Caesers, and Dunn, and Zimmerman, and, of course, Nancy and Adam Lanza.

Well, we all thought it would be hard to top McArdle, but Charlotte Allen is now lapping the field *False **There were not 11 and 12 yo's ***It's K-4 ****There are two male teachers on staff *****There was a male janitor, though I'm not sure why you'd bring a bucket to a gun fight Yeah, adult females are a bunch of feminized weaklings incapable of stopping a man with a gun, but "huskier 12-year-old boys" are known to be impervious to bullets! Y2HH I know what you're saying, but these are people writing for somewhat major publications. Ignoring them won't make them go away. Ridicule and scorn for their terrible ideas might, or at least lets you vent. I'll point out that both Mex and I linked to people mocking them and not the original articles.

It isn't also quite clear-cut that you can get drunk and drive on your own open property. Laws vary by state, but generally there is some stipulation that you must have control over the property and that the public cannot freely enter--meaning you'd need a secured fenced piece of land, not just some open field where someone can wander out. You can also be charged with a DUI for sitting in a driveway with the keys in the ignition. This is based on 2 minutes of googling.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:12 AM) Don't they track large-quantity fertilizer purchases since OKC? Apparently there were proposed rules from Dept. of Homeland Security and some bills in congress as well as state-level bills, but it doesn't seem like it ever went anywhere.

Don't they track large-quantity fertilizer purchases since OKC?